SILVERTON, CO - JULY 13: Amanda Grimes, center, with yellow shirt around waist, poses with pacers, crew and friends after finishing the 100.5-mile Hardrock 100 Endurance Run on July 13, 2014, in the San Juan Mountains in Silverton, Colorado. Grimes was the 100th and final official finisher in the 140-person field, crossing in 47 hours, 50 minutes, about 10 minutes before the cutoff time.

SILVERTON, CO - JULY 11: Kirk Apt shows off his weathered shows during a break at an aid station in the 100.5-mile Hardrock 100 Endurance Run on July 11, 2014, in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. Apt is the only person to have competed in the run all 21 years it has been contested and has finished it 20 times.

SILVERTON, CO - JULY 11: Roger Kane, right, files his final paperwork after learning he would get into the 100.5-mile Hardrock 100 Endurance Run 20 minutes before the start of the race on July 11, 2014, in Silverton, Colorado.

It took only about 10 seconds of wading through Mineral Creek’s frigid water, 2 miles from the Silverton starting line of the Hardrock 100, waiting for the top competitors, for me to realize that ultra- runners are a different breed of athlete.

Numerous people I spoke to along the 100½-mile route — fans who had come to watch in appreciation and awe, aid station volunteers, radio technicians, those who didn’t get in but decided to pace other runners or assist as crew members — often repeated the words: “Hardrock is family.”

Last-minute addition

Roger Kane was inside Silverton High School’s locker room on the morning of July 11, lacing up his shoes, wrapping his feet in duct tape — blister prevention, naturally — and donning running shirt and shorts, preparing for a day mixed with spectating and a training session up the Bear Creek Trail near Ouray. He was the next one on the wait list, and although entrants had failed to appear at the start line before, it had happened maybe once or twice in the run’s 21 years.

“I moped around Silverton all day Thursday,” Kane said, “not really thinking I had a chance.”

At 5:40 a.m., 20 minutes before the start of the race, Dale Garland, the run’s longtime director, walked up to Kane in the locker room and handed him a wristband — what all run competitors are required to wear.

“At that point, I was really incredulous. I just couldn’t believe it,” said Kane, who had run Hardrock in 2010, lives in Centenniel and works for RTD. “And he asked me if I wanted to do it, and I said, ‘Of course!’ I was so thrilled and excited, I could barely function.”

Probably not a response most of us would offer, but Kane was getting a spot in one of the most difficult-to-get-into ultraruns in the country that takes its 140 entrants through San Juan’s mountains between Silverton, Telluride, Lake City and Ouray. He had no crew, pacers or support beyond what the run provided at the 13 aid stations. (Pumpkin pie is a favorite energy source there, Kane said.) And he had just enough time to hand in his medical and contact information, text his wife to say he was in, throw together two drop bags — filled with a few supplies, to be sent to two aid stations — and scramble to the starting line.

The Steamboat Springs waitress started running in 2012 and eventually transitioned to ultrarunning, looking for the next great challenge. She ran her first 100-miler in 2013 at Leadville, and having finished only a handful of ultras, said she was among the least accomplished athletes in the field.

After initially being waitlisted, she finally came off a few weeks before the start day. During the run, she steadily moved along, passing runners later in the race who had gone out too hard or were otherwise suffering and near dropping out. But for her, the last aid station near Mile 90 is where the race was most in doubt.

“Right before Cunningham, I had a mental breakdown,” she recalled a week later, still with swollen feet and blisters. “I had been moving for 37 hours. I had never stayed awake that long in my life. I thought it would be just straight up (after the station), but you had to keep climbing mountains after mountains.”

By then, she was hallucinating: Cairns marking the course morphed into dogs, rocks appeared to be moving when she leaned against them for rest. At one point, a pile of rocks appeared like a sheet of paper printed with the image of a Buddha statue, she said.

Realizing the 48-hour cutoff was near, Grimes and her pacer ran the final 6 miles into Silverton. As she was entering town, Garland, the run director, started running alongside her and cheering her on to kiss the Hardrock, the gesture that marks the end of the run.

Grimes was the 100th and final official finisher, crossing in 47:50:35. Forty more who started had to drop out.

“It’s the proudest I’ve ever been in my life,” her husband, 37-year-old Billy Grimes, recalled with emotion. “We knew she had it in her, but after all that she had been through, her mental state and physical well-being, I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing by letting her leave that last aid station. But I knew she would regret it forever if she didn’t try to finish.”

Keeping the streak alive

Kirk Apt, 52, is the ironman of Hardrock. He has never missed a run since 1992, when the race was first run.

He has started 21 races and finished 20, and is the only person who has competed every year. The only time he failed to make it back to Silverton was that first year, where he dropped out at the Sherman aid station near Mile 70 after what he said was a bout of food poisoning.

“For the past five to eight years, I’ve really slowed down,” said Apt, who lives in Fruita. “I’m not really competitive anymore. Even when I was competitive as a runner, I didn’t have much of a competitive head around (the run). It’s always been my main focus keeping the streak going — whether 29 hours, my fastest, or nearly 40 hours like this year, I want to keep going.”

In 2000, Apt won the run in just under 30 hours. The difference between ultrarunning then and now is a testament to how much more competitive the sport has become.

Looking to next year

Interest in Hardrock is expected to continue its torrid growth, both among those looking to compete, the spectators who attend and those covering it for media and sponsors. Garland told me the board of the run was examining how it might expand participation in future years without compromising the “spirit of the run.” As one pacer told me afterward, putting together an event that stretches through numerous towns and jurisdictions, and requires permits from the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service — as Hardrock does — would be near impossible today.

Hardrock remains an oddity as running and ultrarunning gain more mainstream acceptance, participation and commercialization. It eschews the practice of allowing the sport’s stars to compete because they are stars; they too must go through the lottery system to get in. And even with high interest because of the competitive field this year, the run managed to retain a level of intimacy so rarely found in major races today.

“I lived for 20 years in Crested Butte and loved those mountains,” Apt said. “The San Juans are on a different level — the massive climbs, the huge magnitude of the course. I look at it as a big family gathering that comes together to celebrate summer in the San Juans each year.”

Digital Director of Audience Development for MediaNews Group. He is a former senior editor, director of audience development, digital director of sports and social media editor at The Post. He has covered running, endurance and outdoors sports for years for The Denver Post and other publications. Outside of work, he enjoys running, cycling, snowboarding and hiking.

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